


Laura and Audrey

by Pouxin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Comfort, F/M, M/M, Not A Fix-It, So much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 13:11:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13190799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pouxin/pseuds/Pouxin
Summary: Come on, she said,you can hold me. No one else knows what it’s like after all. What it’s like to lose him.So he did.This is what it’s like, he whispered into her hair, against the hot shell of her ear, just like Phil had all those nights ago,this is what it’s like. It feels like I’m breaking. He sounded almost dumbstruck by it.I didn’t think it would hurt this much either, she confided,but it does.It does, he said,it does, it does, and it doesn’t stop.**How Laura and Audrey became friends, after Phil died.





	Laura and Audrey

**Author's Note:**

> So, having mainlined every bit of Phlint I could get my hot little hands on over the past few months, I felt confident I couldn't really write in the fandom. I just don't know enough about the universe, and you guys are all such awesome writers who have developed such an incredible fanon. And then this little drabble sprung out of me pretty much fully formed in a writing frenzy on my iPhone last night. I can't really explain it! It's also largely het (Clint/Laura, Audrey/Phil) with Phlint only implied, but it is one of the defining relationships. 
> 
> So, thus ends my four year fandom writing drought!
> 
> Un-betaed, all mistakes are mine. Canon divergent in parts. _Watership Down_ being Phil's favourite book is something I came across in the awesome stories of shadowen and it's total head canon for me now.

She met him at seventeen. He was at a garden party at the Emerson’s. She saw the back of his head first. She liked the napes of men’s necks, they always looked vulnerable. His was no exception. But his shoulders looked big, hard, made for fighting. They stretched out the collar of his button down like he’d bought it a size too small. He looked like a common labourer dressed up for a dinner dance; like some kind of joke; one she was in on. She felt herself run slick. Then he turned around, and she saw his eyes, just quickly, nondescript as Thursday puddles, and she was gone. 

He had rough fingers, covered in callouses from his bowstrings, they caught on her clit so it _hurt._ She went wild with it. He touched her so softly, with his rough fingers. He was the kind of man where it didn’t matter how gently he touched you, it hurt. 

When they fucked the first time he didn’t know it was the first ever time, not for her. Because she’d been so hot for it, brazen with it... just like the first time she’d sucked him down, salty and wanting. She arched her back, panted, said _go on then_. Said _don’t **tease**_. Afterwards when he’d seen the blood on his wilting cock he’d seemed ashamed. She’d said, _don’t, don’t_. She licked it off his fingers, where he’d touched himself. His eyes went big, although she knew he’d seen worse things, could tell from the scars on him. He said: _I hurt you_. She said: _I know how to make it better_. There was an ache between her legs that thumped with every heart beat, a little drum of low level agony.  She touched her fingers to it, enough to make it sharp again, flutes and strings. There was such a harmony between pleasure and pain. He watched her intently as she rubbed and pushed at herself, watched her like a hawk. When she shuddered and came, he said: _I’m going to marry you_.

And he did. That night he went to pull out and she said: _no, don’t, you don’t need to do that, not anymore_. And he laughed. They honeymooned in South Georgia. The peaches were blossoming. Her period didn’t come. She said _: it must’ve been that first time, the first time you finished inside me_. He laughed and said _: I always was a good shot_. He laughed and said: _baby, this ain’t anything like the finish_ , _not for you and me._

Her son was born on a cold day in March, the coldest day of the year. He’d been out all night at a bar, he arrived reeking of whiskey and cheap perfume. When the nurse put the boy in his arms he cried. He was so soft with him it made her soft, even though her cunt and back were in agony and her throat was alive with fury. _No one’s ever gonna hurt you_ , he said to the angry red thrashing of limbs that was their baby. _Daddy’s never going to let anything hurt you_.

She gave him two more children after that, a girl and, much later, another boy. _Princess_ , he said to Lila. _Angel. Darling. Little bird_.

 _You are named after the greatest warrior I know,_ he said to Nate. _You are named after her, and another warrior too, the best man I ever knew. My rock. Malen'kiy yastreb_ , he said. _Little pebble. Sweetheart_. 

Her parents didn’t speak to her for years after they had married.  _He’s a criminal_ , her mother said, _a convicted criminal_.  So he was the only family she had. And yet every day he risked himself, he risked her heart, her everything. 

 _It’s alright, baby,_ he said. _There’s a guy - best in the business - and he’s got my back_. 

 _He’s got your back until your luck runs out_ , she said, _then you’re on your own._

His eyes went dark then. _No, it’s not like that_.

Did she mean dark or bright? There was an intensity in them she’d never seen before.

_It’s not like that. This man - he’s got me. He’s really got me._

_He’s **got** you?_

_My back_ , he amended. _He’s got my back._  

How could she hate him though, she knew how helpless it was when someone really had you. After all, hadn’t he had her right from the start? Hadn’t he had her whole heart, all the hot red maw of it, bloody and tender in his warrior’s hands? 

Shouldn’t she be grateful for what Coulson had done for him? He’d been damaged, all angry and fucked up in ways she couldn’t cognise, and now he was whole, somehow, better. When Lila was born he wasn’t out drinking with some woman in some bar. He was right there beside her, rubbing slow circles out on her back, holding her hand, letting her grit the bones there together. _Breathe, baby,_ he said, _breathe_. It was Coulson who had taken that man who had been her husband and given her this new one, this new one who smoothed the sweaty hair back from her brow, who kissed her knuckles as she screamed and cried in her own blood and piss. This new one who held their daughter to his chest and smiled. _You did so good baby. You’re so brave and wonderful. I love you._

The danger of it still made her heart stutter. _No one will hurt you or the kids,_ he said. _Coulson promised_.

 _Oh_ , she said. She couldn’t keep the poison from her voice. Coulson. _Well, if **Coulson** promised..._

 _It’s not like that,_ he said. 

 _Well, tell me what it’s like,_ she replied.

But he couldn’t, because they both knew. They both knew it was just like that. 

When he died, Clint cried like he had when Cooper was born. The only two times she’d ever seen him cry. She held him to her breasts, wished she had more comfort to give him. _Shush_ she said, but he couldn’t shush. _It’s ok_ , she said. But it wasn’t. _I know, I know_ she said. Because she did. Knew what it was when you loved someone, but imperfectly, not enough. It was still love though. _I love you_ , she said, and he leant further into her, kissed her neck. She thought if he said it back then, it might be the end for them, because to tell someone you loved them when your heart was breaking over someone else was more than she could rightly bear. But he didn’t. _I can’t stand it,_ he said instead. _Baby, I just can’t stand it._  

_Will you come with me tomorrow? Will you hold my hand?_

What could she say to that? What could she say to that from the man who had held her hand through everything?

 _Yes_ , she said. _Of course._

That was the night he gave her another son.

 

*******

 

She met him outside the concert hall. She’d gone out for a cigarette, feeling the smooth pull of it knit across her frayed nerves. She always felt too tight, too stretched, after a big gig. Playing by herself, for herself, was cathartic, but for some reason playing for an audience always left her wired instead. He materialised out of the shadows by the dumpsters in a way that should’ve been unnerving, but he was so nondescript it was almost comforting. _I heard you play_ , he said. _Oh_ , she replied, coolly. She raised an eyebrow at him, flicked the ash from her Lucky Strike. _I think you know what it’s like to hear you_ , he said. _Do I now?_ she asked. _Yes_ , he said, _it’s what you were born to do. There’s a certain rightness in watching someone do what that were born to do. It’s restorative. Good for the soul. So, thank you_. He held his hand out. _Phil,_ he said. She took it, expecting it to be smooth, like an accountant’s, but finding it instead as rough as hers, calloused from her cello strings. A fighter’s hands.

They went to dinner. He was quiet, unassuming. When she offered to pay half he did not make a fuss.  But later that night he played her with the casual care of an instrument he’d known all his life. She told him this. He smiled. _What a lovely tune you make_ , he whispered, right in to her ear. She shivered under those fine fingers, that hot breath, and came again, as if he’d commanded it. 

He raised an eyebrow the first time he came to her duplex, stuffed to the rafters with bric-a-brac, souvenirs from her life.  He would tease her gently, _who would have thought the ice queen of the Portland Symphony would be a hoarder?_  One time he asked her _what would you save in a fire? One thing?_

 _My cello_ she replied, quick as a hawk, and he smiled.

Of course she knew what he would take, the same two things he always took with him on missions, in the bottom of his immaculately packed hold-all. His collection of vintage Captain America cards and a battered copy of _Watership Down_. Someone had written inside the front cover ‘ _To PJ - “We all have to meet our match sometime or other” - CF_ ’. 

She always knew she would never have his whole heart, that part of it, the larger, better, braver part of it would always belong to the agency. But she was content with a smaller, lesser, dirtier part. Until she came to wonder what else it was that might have some claim on his heart. It had been a bad time for him after the Hawkeye and Black Widow incident, when Clint had been suspended. She knew that. But it seemed worse for him than it should be. _PJ. CF._  

 _You really care about him_ , she said.

It was a statement, but Phil answered it like a question. 

_He’s my asset. He’s my responsibility._

_But it’s more than that,_ she said quietly. 

 _There was a time_... Phil started. He stopped. A muscle in his jaw jumped. It was more than he usually gave away. 

 _There **was** a time?_ she asked. Gently.

 _He’s my asset,_ Phil repeated.

_But you still... You love him._

This time Phil took it as the statement she intended it to be, and did not reply. 

 _Did you ever have sex?_ she asked. _I don’t mind. I don’t care if you-... if anything, it’s kinda... hot?_

He looked at her, then, really looked at her, his blue eyes hot and wild. She’d always liked their mildness.

 _Unless you still want him_ , she said. _If that’s... I feel I already share you enough._

 _I want you,_ he said, with a quiet urgency.

_But you want him...?_

He shrugged, helpless, his mouth angry. 

 _I want what I want._ Then, again, _I want you_. 

 _Ok,_ she said, _ok_. She let him slide his tongue up the angle of her bared throat, thread his fingers in her hair. She felt herself go squirmy and hot between her legs, her cunt bunch up like it did every time he put those knowing hands of his on her. It was enough. It would have to be enough. 

Losing him hurt a surprising amount. She’d always known it was a likelihood. It’s why they were so studiedly casual with each other. So careful. Still, it felt like her heart was broken. She slept in the bed of his small midtown apartment for five nights running. The first morning when she woke up to the smell of him, but then remembered he was dead, she had to run to the bathroom to vomit. She threw up so hard it made her ribs ache, caged as they were around her broken heart. 

She saw him at the funeral. _CF._ He looked destroyed. His eyes were unreal, two great wounds in his face. He walked to the lectern like he was facing down a hoard of enemy fighters.  _My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today_ , he read. She ran her string callouses compulsively over the lucent skin on the inside of her wrist. His voice was just as rough as her fingers. 

She knew she just had to wait, that then the fresh blister of his loss would become something harder, something tougher.  Stronger.  That it would make her playing better, in the end.  If she could just endure this bit, these moments of agony.

Outside, after the service, she caught his eye. His mouth quirked when he saw her. Like he knew she could see into the soul of him, knew there was no point pretending. What could you do but laugh then? It was all so pointless. Pointless and hollow. He came up to her. Phil had always said he was brave.

 _I’m sorry_ , he said. _I’m really so... I’m so sorry._  

She met his ruined eyes, held them for several long beats.

 ** _I’m_** _sorry_ , she said, finally. 

She held out her arms.

He looked at them.

 _Come on_ , she said, _you can hold me. No one else knows what it’s like after all. What it’s like to lose him._  

So he did. 

 _This is what it’s like,_ he whispered into her hair, against the hot shell of her ear, just like Phil had all those nights ago, _this is what it’s like. It feels like I’m breaking_. He sounded almost dumbstruck by it. 

 _I didn’t think it would hurt this much either,_ she confided, _but it does_.

 _It does,_ he said, _it does, it does, and it doesn’t stop._

He cupped one of his large hands to the back of her neck, and she felt the twin calluses on his fingers then, just like hers.  Of course: the cellist, the archer.  Both with their bows; their art, their pain, and their music.  She went to tell him that it would stop, that one day your heart just gets used to the damage the same way your fingers do, that it adapts; but just then she saw _her_ over his shoulder. The other other woman. Resplendent in her black dress. Staring at them. Her mouth a tight line, her eyes weary. A look she herself knew well. 

She kissed his cheek, then disentangled herself.  Walked over.

 _Audrey_ , she said, holding out her hand.

 _Laura,_ the woman replied, taking it. Her face was hard.

_I believe we have something in common._

Laura’s face softened then, something tender giving behind her eyes. She gave a small laugh.

_I guess you could say that._

Later she’d ask Audrey how it was for her, the sharing. _It is what it is,_ Audrey said, paraphrasing what Phil had once told her, all hot and sad and desperate _. And anyway, you don’t have to do it anymore._ Laura touched a hand subconsciously to her growing belly, shrugged. _There will always be a part of Clint that belongs to him,_ she said. _It doesn’t matter that he’s dead._  

PJ and CF. 

 _But you’re strong,_ Audrey said.  _You’re strong and he needs you now. That part most of all._

Laura looked at her for a long while.

 _You’re the strongest woman I know, Audrey Nathan_ , Laura said, finally.  _When this baby comes, I’m going to name it for you._

They met up for coffee sometimes. Laura and Audrey. There were two men who had loved them. It was enough. 

 


End file.
